Cheers, fears as Amazon unveils headquarters plan

More than 18,000 new apartments, including 3,420 for-sale units, have been completed since 2006, according to the Long Island City Partnership.

However, not everyone was swept up in the excitement.

It's not just talk from NY elected officials either. Long Island City has the most parking complaints per resident in New York's five boroughs, and also ranks No. 1 in complaints about blocked bike lanes, according to real estate website Localize.city.

But even many critics of tax incentives said the packages offered to Amazon were less egregious than some past examples.

The company will reap the benefit of financial incentives in return for creating tens of thousands of jobs with an average wage of more than $150,000.

The Washington area has long seemed like an obvious choice for Amazon, which has rapidly expanded its influence operation in the capital as its diverse business lines came under the eye of dozens of government agencies.

What do the cities get in return for these payouts?

NY state offered $1.2 billion in tax credits through a program called Excelsior, tied to the creation of at least 25,000 new jobs and $2.3 billion in Amazon investment.

Amazon - which initially launched a nationwide search for a single, region-transforming campus to supplement its Seattle base- said it chose to opt for two sites to gain greater access to brainpower. Competitive salaries aren't tied to market fluctuations, and there's a bigger focus on work-life balance and a more casual environment, where jeans and t-shirts are the norm, Pollak said.

For anyone wondering what the future of housing prices looks like post-Amazon, look no further than Seattle.

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Housing costs in Arlington County are already high as the average income for the county is $110,000.

Lang's analysis of 13 large USA commercial real estate markets revealed that the suburban Edgeless City contained 40 per cent of the office space in the surveyed cities, including NY and Washington, D.C. However, the average across 13 markets hid some of the diversity - whereas 57 per cent of the regional office space in NY was in the primary downtown area, only 29 per cent of the office space in Washington, D.C., was similarly situated. The Texan city had offered economic incentives worth up to $US1.1 billion ($US22,000 for each of the 50,000 jobs).

"Offering massive corporate welfare from scarce public resources to one of the wealthiest corporations in the world at a time of great need in our state is just wrong", said New York State Sen.

The competition had been derided in some quarters as a "Hunger Games" contest pitting cities against each other, with rival bidders piling up offers of incentives for one of the largest and most successful global corporations.

Should we be sceptical about this public bidding process?

Beyond the Potomac Yard entrance, money is also slated to help fund a planned second entrance on the east side of the Crystal City Metro station, for projects to make it easier and safer to cross Route 1, for an already planned pedestrian bridge between Crystal City and Reagan National, and for the ongoing expansion of transit service connecting Pentagon City, Crystal City and Potomac Yard.

It also happens to have checked all of Amazon's boxes. The Amazon effect would be familiar to anyone who'd lived in the company's base in Seattle, where single-family home prices have gained nearly 80 per cent in the past six years.

And while HQ2 was initially pitched as being equal in size to the current Seattle headquarters, the fact it's been split in two means Seattle will now retain bragging rights as the single biggest.

Additionally, Amazon said that it has selected Nashville for a new "Center of Excellence" for its Operations business, which is responsible for the company's customer fulfillment, transportation, supply chain, and other similar activities.

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